Adjustable shelves have previously been utilized on the inside of appliance doors such as refrigerator or freezer doors, for example. The adjustability of the shelves enables a user to be able to support different size articles on the appliance door.
When the appliance door is a refrigerator or freezer door having an outer panel and an inner panel with thermal insulation therebetween, the adjustable shelves have previously been supported on the inner panel. To meet the load requirements of the Underwriters Laboratory, the thickness of the inner panel has had to be increased for increasing loads.
In a two door refrigerator having a fresh food compartment closed by a first door and a freezer compartment closed by a second door, for example, the size of the door for the fresh food compartment usually has been substantially larger than the freezer compartment door. As a result, the thickness of the inner panel of the fresh food compartment door has had to be thicker than the inner panel of the freezer compartment door. This has resulted in the inner panel of the two doors being formed of two different thicknesses to increase manufacturing costs or the smaller of the two doors having its inner panel of the same thickness as the larger of the two doors to increase material costs.
Furthermore, the same problem of costs, either manufacturing or material, of the relative thicknesses of the inner panel existed with respect to refrigerators having different total capacities even for single door refrigerators. Thus, the largest capacity refrigerator would require either its door to have its inner panel of a greater thickness than smaller capacity refrigerators or all refrigerators smaller in capacity than the largest capacity refrigerator to have the inner panel of the door formed of the same thickness as the thickness of the inner panel of the door of the largest capacity refrigerator.
The appliance door of the present invention overcomes the foregoing problems through providing a module support system in which modules, which support the articles and may be deemed adjustable shelves, have their load substantially carried by the outer door assembly of the door rather than its inner panel. This enables the inner panel to be the same thickness irrespective of the load applied to the modules. Therefore, there is not the requirement of either the inner panel of the appliance door having different thicknesses for different size doors or the inner panels of the doors for all size refrigerators having the maximum thickness of the inner panel of the largest size door.
Additionally, by attaching the load to the outer door assembly, which is formed of a steel outer panel and rigid foam, loads of the modules are relatively small for a steel-foam composite in comparison with plastic, which is the material of the inner panel, so that relatively large loads can be accommodated without having to change the thickness of the outer door assembly. Since the steel-foam composite has a longer life than plastic, the support of the modules by the steel-foam composite outer door assembly creates a longer life than previously available supports for adjustable shelves in which the shelves are supported by the plastic inner panel of the appliance door.
Furthermore, the module of the present invention is formed with sets of hooks supported on its back and bottom walls so that the same load can be supported with a lesser thickness of the walls of the module or a lower performance plastic material of the same thickness than previously available modules having sets of hooks only on their back walls. Thus, a cantilevered mounted module can be produced at less cost when mounting the sets of hooks on the back and bottom walls of the module.